VRTO December Toronto VR Meetup Recap

The VRTO team presented one final Meetup for 2016 on December 21st in Toronto at Spadina and Queen, in the heart of the city. Fifty-five attendees slogged through the thick snow to arrive at MSMU’s cozy brick house, lined with Christmas lights and featuring a pool table and two HTC Vive setups.

Olga Nabatova shares her TiltBrushing knowledge with the attendees

Artist Olga Nabatova, started off the night’s presentations with a review of some of her VR based paintings in Google’s Tilt Brush, as commissioned by Google, the Ontario Science Centre and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Attendees were invited up to the stage to enter into her works of living art and contribute something themselves.

VR Producer Elli Raynai was next and did a fascinating drilldown on his productions from the past two years that include “I Am You,” “The Key,” and his latest – “Circuit Rider.” While Raynai used photogrammetry and Unity for autobiographical piece The Key, he has moved to Unreal Engine 4 and a team of 8 to create his post-modern narrative/game hybrid Circuit Rider.

The night was capped off by VRTO Director Keram Malicki-Sanchez who did a fast-paced rundown of some of the virtual reality industry’s biggest news, changes and projections. You can access his slides below.

VRTO is so grateful to all of you for making this such a vibrant and relevant community. We are always fascinated by your stories and projects and forever invite you to be an active part of this network. Thank you to everyone who made our conferences and festivals possible in 2016 and here is to a new year!